Nothing happened. No one got hurt. So why waste time writing it up?
That's the thinking behind most unreported near misses. And it makes sense on a busy site when there's actual work to get done. But here's the thing: near misses are free lessons. They show you exactly where your risks are, without anyone paying the price.
Ignoring them means waiting for the real incident to find out what went wrong.
What counts as a near miss?
A near miss is any unplanned event that could have caused injury or damage but didn't. The ladder that slipped but no one was climbing it. The load that swung loose but missed everyone. The puddle near the electrics that got mopped up before anything shorted.
These moments are easy to shrug off. But they're warnings, and they tend to repeat themselves until something worse happens.
The pattern problem
One near miss on its own might look like bad luck. But when you start recording them, patterns emerge. Maybe the same piece of equipment keeps causing issues. Maybe incidents cluster around a particular time of day, or a specific task.
Without a record, you can't spot these trends. You're left reacting to injuries instead of preventing them.
Why people don't report
It's rarely laziness. More often, it's a mix of time pressure, awkward reporting processes, and a culture where flagging problems feels like creating extra work or pointing fingers.
If your near miss process involves filling out a lengthy form back at the office, most people won't bother. The moment passes, the day moves on, and the information is lost.
Making it worth the effort
The easier you make reporting, the more data you get. And the more data you get, the clearer your risk picture becomes.
A good near miss report doesn't need to be long. Capture what happened, where, when, and what could have gone wrong. A photo helps. So does noting any contributing factors like weather, fatigue, or equipment condition.
The key is making it quick enough that people actually do it.
Small reports, big picture
Near miss data feeds directly into better decisions. It helps you prioritise fixes, justify budget for improvements, and show regulators or clients that you take safety seriously, not just on paper, but in practice.
It also shifts the culture. When teams see that reporting leads to real changes, they're more likely to speak up. That's when safety stops being a box-ticking exercise and starts being part of how you work.
Keep it simple
riskgu lets your team log near misses in under a minute, straight from their phone. Add a photo, drop a pin on the location, and it's done. Everything feeds into one dashboard so you can spot trends and act on them before they escalate.